After some epic nights of mixing, I brought the Sad Knights record in for a landing, and went straight back into mixing the Oh, Libia! album, which I had been working on in September. I am really pleased with both sets of mixes, fine work! The Oh, Libia album has a little more work left on it, hopefully I squeeze it in tomorrow when I get home.
Being a bit bummed that I missed so many good concerts the week before I took the opportunity to sneak out from mixing for an evening to check my friend Eric McFadden playing at Cafe De La Danse, just a few minutes’ walk from my place. I was familiar with his music, but had never seen him play. To be honest, usually when friends are playing in Paris--well, I’m busy, or I’m enjoying a rare evening without work with my family. But, on this night, I finished the Sad Knights stuff in the afternoon, was able to keep my date with Aden to watch ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ (I actually liked the French voices better than Ms. Barrymore’s, etc) and hopped out to make the last few songs of the show, which was a perfect amount for me. Eric is a wicked guitar player and plays a wild, Django/Tom Waits kind of stomping swing, with gruff vocals and great lyrics. Paula O’ Rourke, his bass playing partner in crime for many years, is a great musician too, and a vibrant personality onstage and off. For this unique Paris show, Eric had a French drummer and Max, a blind accordion genius. I was amazed at Max’s ability to know when to take a solo, or trade licks--since this set was not very rehearsed and most of those ‘take a solo’ bits are done with visual clues--but Max was on it, as if we could see Eric’s gestures. Incredible. Oh, and there was a blues harp player, who came out and jammed superbly between fits of vomiting backstage--he was a victim of food poisoning, and he still gave it the goods onstage.
After the show I was hanging with Eric and his crew, and opening act Killing Mood, whose guitarist was quite a Posies fan. All of my neighborhood was buzzing that night, a Tuesday--Wednesday was Armistice Day, so a bank holiday for most, and thus all the bars were packed. At Le Motel we could barely approach the bar, let alone speak to the judge. I finally got Eric installed at a place that had single malt scotch (French people don’t really drink it, so it’s not so easy to find). I had two glasses of champagne over the course of the evening and I was beat.
The next evening I met Eric and Paula and some of their Parisian friends for dinner, with Aden having a great time playing with Eric’s dreads and giving him a few extra tattoos. (Aden, knowing Eric didn’t speak French was drawing abstract blobs and speaking in a friendly, cooing voice--’Oh, see, I’ve made a nice dogshit tattoo on your arm. Oh, you like that? Yes? Oh, fine, how about another one then?’.)
But I was working that day--so after dinner I went back to editing til 5.30 in the morning!
HASSELT, 11/13
Friday the 13th. Lucky day for us. I was up early, took Aden to school, had a morning appointment, bought Dom a hard drive to back up her ancient Compaq laptop, worked on the latest mix for Oh, Libia!, and headed to Gare du Nord. I picked up all the tickets I needed for my upcoming travels, boarded my train, fell asleep. Woke up and got off in Brussels, and ran into Audrey and Jerome from the band Liquid Architecture, for whom I played guitar for a few shows in 2007. Jerome has been the director of several contemporary art museums around the world, and was coming to give a lecture (Jerome: “I am here in Brussels for a lecture”. Ken: “Oh, are you in trouble?”).
I got on the train to Hasselt, which takes its time picking its way thru beautiful rolling countryside, little farms with chickens, goats, etc. running free range. I thought--I wonder if all Belgian farms are this perfect, this organic, this natural--or is this like where they painted the grass green along the railroad when Mao would tour the Chinese countryside, so he never saw the famine and wastelands his policies were creating...but, let’s not be paranoid, now...enjoy the lilting gauze of autumnal dusk...
I arrived in Hasselt, the end of the line, and emerged from the station, and cabbed to the venue--a little farther out than I imagined, in an industrial ‘park’ on the edge of town. But what a venue--the Muziek-o-Droom is now three venues, a bar (with a small stage, so 4 venues), a music school...it’s one of the great culture houses of Benelux (and there are many). The staff is super pro and friendly. And they did good promo--I was surprised to learn we had 130 tickets already sold. The guys soon arrived from Norway via Brussels airport and train to Hasselt, and we set up on the ace backline that was already set up to our stage plot, and were able to jam a bit. Then we were served a delicious meal, and could chill until showtime. An from V2 came and delivered some CDs to sell on the tour, and we were able to just enjoy the pleasant atmosphere in the spacious backstage. The support band arriving in the dressing room a little sweatier than they were earlier meant they were done and we could get down to business. And soon it was just time to launch. We plugged in, taped down, and did the D’s thing. Now, the place was full, people were into it, we sold tons of merch (the best measure of a crowd’s appreciation, believe it or not) but during the show, the typically shy Belgians were actually a-typically even MORE shy, I couldn’t get them to jump for love nor money, except a few brave folks who were super into it in front. Even after the shows, people who I had seen standing like scarecrows in the back, not smiling, not even swaying, would gently come up to the merch table, buy a CD, shake my hand and mumble “it was very good” without making eye contact. That’s shy. A couple of 16 year old girls actually left because they were AFRAID! I had half jumped off the stage and shot out a leg straight in front of me to touch a pole on that was behind them, and stood screaming into the mic, spread eagle, my other leg still back onstage some 4 feet away. They were shaking like...chihuahuas. Funny we should be mentioning chihuahuas cuz after the show, an long time Posies fan, Antje, and her b.f. invited us back to her place for some wine and such (she had offered use of her jacuzzi bought no one went for it) and Antje makes a living breeding chihuahuas...she had about 30 of them, adults for breeding and puppies of varying size (well, varying sizes of small)...adorable. I was so glad Aden didn’t see this...and that she can’t read...cuz she begged us for a chihuahua after seeing the movie...
ROTTERDAM, 11/14
Not much to do on a Saturday morning in Hasselt, except the support band guys worked at a music store, so the guys went there. The wifi didn’t work with Mac--Holiday Inn is PC-only, folks, beware--so I had to actually *read* something. And have lunch--I ordered a salad with camenbaert, but actually it was the other way around--two enormous wedges of camenbaert, with a sprig of salad. The cheese was heated up, and gooey, and I thought there’s no way I can eat that all, and then I did.
We walked in the sunshine to the station, and I picked up the guys’ train tickets for Monday, since I wouldn’t be going to the station with them to make their 6.17am train to Brussels airport. We got on the train to Antwerp, initially we were in first class, and I moved the guys out a misguided sense of fair play to the next car. The first class car had great 70s decor, orange with kind of jungle animal drawings. Tacky in a homey, Belgium kinda way.
Antwerp’s station is enormous--you can see that they dug into the earth and added many new levels of track below the original platforms--and most of the platforms are open, so even at the bottom (where our train to Rotterdam was coming) you can look all the way up to the fishribs of steel and glass of the atrium of the art-nouveau masterpiece that Antwerp’s main station hall is. We had cafe in the Royal Cafe, all white marble and gold leaf. And then descended down to track 21, and got on the train, which was pretty full. It was one those compartments-with-a-narrow-passageway-down-the side, which is not a very efficient use of space. But, we made it, and Rotterdam was blustery and fabulous--if you’ve been following this far, you’ll know it’s one of my favorite cities in the world, full of preposterous and fun architecture and public art. The war’s tragedy made it a blank canvas (to see what was lost, go to the garden district, the old city’s beauty is still preserved there) and the city’s triumph is that they didn’t rebuild that grim way that London did...the wealth of Rotterdam and the progressive spirit of Holland combined here with some dramatic experiments in building. Unf., not so much to see today, since it was dark...we checked into our 4 person room at the hotel Emma, across the street from Rotown (I played Rotown on the Soft Commands tour, and stayed at the Emma, and they charged the prepaid room to my credit card, it took me like two months to get that back, but no hard feelings, guys). They recommended us a restaurant, which we walked to, but it was packed and had an hour wait for a table, so we went down the block and found a great little place and dined on canette, springbok carpaccio, and other delights. Then we headed to the venue, Watt. Watt in the 90s was the classic venue Nighttown, where the Posies had some legendary shows. It’s been refurbished and updated and is now a stylish modern joint--with a big room (where Belgian artist Milow had a sold out show) and the small club where we were playing. No support band, since our show was supposed to start right after Milow finished (people from his show could come to ours for free). I would say this show was even better than Hasselt, we were warmed up, played some new songs, I was more relaxed since we had a show under our belts. I was able to lead the crowd all over the venue, at one point pulling them all out of the club into the cafe to yell at them a cappella. I did some crawling, some bending...I sang better. Rotterdam is good for you, tho.
After the show, the club kept going with some really obnoxious (this is a good thing) kind of scary electronische musikk. The big room had more like 80s disco going on. We hid in the dressing room til we got bored, then took the stuff back to the hotel, and then split up--the rhythm section always has post-show junk food munchies, and the front dudes can’t be bothered. I had a civilized glass of wine at one of Holland’s many ‘brown cafes’--candlelit, wooden bars that I enjoy so much. Then got some rest--we had this weird hotel room that was two rooms joined end to end--a key got you in to the whole deal, then you had a skeleton key to get in the back room. One bathroom served both, but the back room had a washbasin. When I came back, that made three of us accounted for. Ralla had gone out with Alison, our dedicated UK follower, and Ralla wanted to experience some of the local vegetation, a novelty for most visitors to Holland. Since the smoking ban applied to all smokables, you can’t sit in a coffee shop and enjoy your product (except for that which is in edible form of course). So, Ralla consumed his on the street, which is legal. And predictably, his appetite thusly stimulated, he went in search of kebab. Baard grew weary of Ralla’s increasingly erratic wanderings, and asked him to bring him back something to the hotel, and went to bed. Many hours later, Ralla stumbled in...having forgotten he ate a kebab, he ate Baard’s, in a (so he thought) clandestine struggle with the foil, in the bathroom, Ralla lost the match--the kebab one, and Ralla ended up flat on his ass with a bonked head in the shower stall. When I went to take a shower the next morning, shards of foil were everywhere, the sink was lined with napkins for a reason that was never properly explained, and a half eaten, victorious (and still living) kebab stood defiantly on the edge of the sink.
Our train to Antwerp today was the actual Thalys, that’s some deluxe comfort there, folks. Now we’re on one of the IC trains, bound for the end of the line, Marvin Gaye’s former home base of Oostende. As the conductor is coming down the aisle, I can tell you that not since I boarded the Thalys in Paris has anyone checked our tickets. Not Brussels-Hasselt, not Hasselt-Antwerp, not Antwerp-Rotterdam, not Rotterdam-Antwerp. Weird, eh?
Love
KS
IC 1836 Antwerp-Oostende
